uphillbothways

Without proven treatments, many people are still sick.

Since August 2020, David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at New York’s Mount Sinai Health System, has helped treat more than 3,000 people with Long COVID. These patients, in his experience, fit into one of three groups.

A small number, no more than 10%, have stubborn symptoms that don’t get better, no matter what Putrino and his team try. A big chunk see some improvement, but remain sick. And about 15% to 20% report full recovery—an elusive benchmark that Putrino greets with cautious optimism.

“I call it ‘fully recovered for now,’” Putrino says, since lots of people’s symptoms eventually come back, sometimes if they catch COVID-19 again, which can land them back at square one.

Putrino’s outlook isn’t purposely gloomy; it’s one informed by the difficult realities of treating Long COVID, a condition with no known cure and is defined by long-lasting symptoms following a case of COVID-19. More than 200 symptoms are associated with Long COVID, commonly including fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, intolerance to exercise, chronic pain, and more. Millions of people around the world have developed Long COVID, and an uncertain number have completely recovered.

“It’s really hard to tell” exactly how many people get over their symptoms entirely, says Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis who researches Long COVID. “But anecdotally, from clinical experience, the majority unfortunately don’t.”

Who gets better?
Zeroing in on the Long COVID recovery rate is a work in progress, but two recent reports from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest remission is possible.

One, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, found that roughly 6% of U.S. adults currently have Long COVID, down from about 7.5% in the summer of 2022. The other found that many people’s symptoms disappear over time. A year post-infection, people who’d had COVID-19 were roughly as likely to have lingering symptoms as people who’d had other respiratory illnesses, the researchers found. That tracks with a January 2023 study in the BMJ, which found people who develop Long COVID after mild initial illnesses can expect most symptoms to improve within a year.

Other researchers, however, have come to less optimistic conclusions. In an August study published in Nature Medicine, Al-Aly and his team found people who’d had mild COVID-19 remained at increased risk of more than 20 Long COVID symptoms—including fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, and pulmonary issues—two years later. People whose COVID-19 was severe enough that they were hospitalized were at increased risk of more than 50 health problems two years later.

The findings reflect “the arduous, protracted road to recovery" for some people who catch COVID-19, Al-Aly says—a road that many people with Long COVID are still on, according to research posted online in July as a not-yet-peer-reviewed preprint. In a group of 341 people with Long COVID, only about 8% had fully recovered after two years of follow-up, co-author Dr. Lourdes Mateu and her colleagues found.

How can multiple studies on the same topic reach such different conclusions? The way they’re designed can make a difference, Putrino says. Some Long COVID research uses data drawn from patients’ health records. In these studies, Putrino says, researchers sometimes assume symptoms have resolved if someone stops coming in for care. But there are lots of other reasons someone might stop seeing their doctor: financial constraints, frustration that treatments aren’t working, health declining to the point that leaving home becomes difficult, and so on.

“Recovery” can also be defined differently. Is it a complete resolution of symptoms, or improving enough that someone can function despite their ill health? Once researchers start splitting those hairs, Al-Aly says, they often find that someone “didn’t really recover; they adjusted to a new baseline.”

For that reason, research that takes into account patients’ own perceptions of their symptoms and recovery is important. That’s what Mateu and her team did. For two years, they tracked Long COVID patients who’d sought care at a hospital in Badalona, Spain, periodically asking about their symptoms during face-to-face visits and performing secondary diagnostic tests when necessary. With that level of scrutiny, Mateu says, the vast majority of patients did not meet their definition of recovery: the resolution of all persistent symptoms for at least three consecutive months.

Granted, the patients in Mateu’s study were a specific group. Most were infected before vaccines (which have been shown to be somewhat, though not entirely, protective against Long COVID) were available and they were all sick enough to seek care at a hospital-based Long COVID clinic. Counterintuitively, however, the people in the study who were originally sickest—those who were admitted to the ICU when they had acute COVID-19—were more likely to recover within two years than people with milder initial illnesses, Mateu says.

In some cases, Mateu says, people with severe COVID-19 are left with issues that are significant but have better prognoses than Long COVID, such as post-intensive care syndrome. People who develop Long COVID after mild illnesses, by contrast, can be more vexing. Their test results may come back pristine yet their health remains poor, making it difficult for doctors to determine what to treat and how.

NIH is studying possible treatments
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently launched clinical trials focused on potential treatments, but it’s not yet clear if any will succeed and less likely any will work for all Long COVID patients, since the condition’s symptoms can look different from person to person. The NIH will test various therapies in patients with specific symptom clusters—offering brain training for those with cognitive dysfunction, for example, and wakefulness drugs for those with sleep issues—rather than across the board.

As of now, there is no one-size-fits-all treatment for Long COVID, nor any treatment guaranteed to work at all. Each time a new patient enters their clinic, Putrino and his team start from the ground up, doing a comprehensive analysis of the individual's health in hopes of finding a problem that may respond to drugs, supplements, nerve stimulation, or other tools.

Sometimes this approach works better than others; sometimes it doesn’t work at all. The rarity of complete recovery, Putrino says, underscores how desperately Long COVID sufferers need more extensive treatment trials, and fast.

“I feel time pressure with these patients,” Putrino says. “Every second that we’re not testing something new or trying something that’s a moonshot for these patients, they’re getting worse.”

archive link: https://archive.is/EKcy0

The White House on Tuesday bashed House Republicans for pursuing “handouts” for pharmaceutical companies to highlight its announcement of the first 10 drugs chosen for Medicare price negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

“[A]s the Biden Administration takes these newest historic actions to lower drug costs for Americans and strengthen Medicare, congressional Republicans continue to side with Big Pharma’s price gouging and cuts to Medicare benefits instead,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates wrote in a memo.

“Not only do congressional Republicans want to take the new benefits being announced today away from Americans with repeal legislation — they are even siding with Big Pharma’s lawsuits to stop them in their tracks,” he wrote.

The drugs, announced Tuesday by the White House, were chosen based on their eligibility under the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law in a year ago. They account for $50.5 billion in total gross Medicare Part D costs.

Negotiations over these drugs will take place in 2023 and 2024, and drugmakers have until Oct. 1 to sign agreements, according to the law. However, industry groups are seeking an injunction by that date amid various legal efforts to block the law entirely. Even if it goes forward as planned, actual savings would not kick in until 2026.

In his memo, Bates noted that Republicans have floated trying to repeal Biden’s plan to let Medicare negotiate lower drug costs, pointing to the 2022 midterms when some Republicans said an agenda item would be to claw back the law.

He said doing so would benefit only big pharmaceutical companies and contrasted the GOP economic agenda to Biden’s economic agenda, dubbed Bidenomics.

“The handouts congressional Republicans are pursuing for Big Pharma would explode our deficit, weaken Medicare, and subject more American seniors and families to price gouging for life-saving medicines,” Bates wrote.

“Across the board, the hallmark of congressional Republicans’ trickle-down economic agenda is to increase costs and financial burdens shouldered by hardworking Americans in exchange for welfare payoffs to the super rich and multinational corporations. In this case, Big Pharma.”

“We should be bolstering Medicare’s ability to lower drug costs for families, instead of trying to erase them,” he added.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), among the GOP critics of the drug negotiations, said in a hearing in June the plan is “an unconstitutional taking” and it will likely face challenges in the courts, in light of a Merck lawsuit against the drug pricing provision.

Ahead of the midterm elections, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said repealing the law could be a GOP agenda item “because those drug provisions are so dangerous, by discouraging investment in life-saving cures,” Axios reported at the time.

Later Tuesday, Biden is expected to give a speech to mark the selection of the drugs.

archive link: https://archive.is/wip/dx3px

The White House on Tuesday bashed House Republicans for pursuing “handouts” for pharmaceutical companies to highlight its announcement of the first 10 drugs chosen for Medicare price negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

“[A]s the Biden Administration takes these newest historic actions to lower drug costs for Americans and strengthen Medicare, congressional Republicans continue to side with Big Pharma’s price gouging and cuts to Medicare benefits instead,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates wrote in a memo.

“Not only do congressional Republicans want to take the new benefits being announced today away from Americans with repeal legislation — they are even siding with Big Pharma’s lawsuits to stop them in their tracks,” he wrote.

The drugs, announced Tuesday by the White House, were chosen based on their eligibility under the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law in a year ago. They account for $50.5 billion in total gross Medicare Part D costs.

Negotiations over these drugs will take place in 2023 and 2024, and drugmakers have until Oct. 1 to sign agreements, according to the law. However, industry groups are seeking an injunction by that date amid various legal efforts to block the law entirely. Even if it goes forward as planned, actual savings would not kick in until 2026.

In his memo, Bates noted that Republicans have floated trying to repeal Biden’s plan to let Medicare negotiate lower drug costs, pointing to the 2022 midterms when some Republicans said an agenda item would be to claw back the law.

He said doing so would benefit only big pharmaceutical companies and contrasted the GOP economic agenda to Biden’s economic agenda, dubbed Bidenomics.

“The handouts congressional Republicans are pursuing for Big Pharma would explode our deficit, weaken Medicare, and subject more American seniors and families to price gouging for life-saving medicines,” Bates wrote.

“Across the board, the hallmark of congressional Republicans’ trickle-down economic agenda is to increase costs and financial burdens shouldered by hardworking Americans in exchange for welfare payoffs to the super rich and multinational corporations. In this case, Big Pharma.”

“We should be bolstering Medicare’s ability to lower drug costs for families, instead of trying to erase them,” he added.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), among the GOP critics of the drug negotiations, said in a hearing in June the plan is “an unconstitutional taking” and it will likely face challenges in the courts, in light of a Merck lawsuit against the drug pricing provision.

Ahead of the midterm elections, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said repealing the law could be a GOP agenda item “because those drug provisions are so dangerous, by discouraging investment in life-saving cures,” Axios reported at the time.

Later Tuesday, Biden is expected to give a speech to mark the selection of the drugs.

archive link: https://archive.is/wip/dx3px

Australia gifted the Corvo PPDS drone, made of lightweight board and rubber, to Ukraine. Now it's possible they've struck a Russian airfield.

Ukraine claimed that an attack that damaged five fighter planes at a Russian airfield was carried out using "cardboard" drones from Australia.

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) told the Kyiv Post on Saturday that it had struck a MiG-29 four Su-30 fighter jets at Kursk airfield in western Russia.
As well as the planes, the drones damaged two Pantsir missile launchers and part of an S-300 air defense system, the SBU told the outlet.

According to prominent pro-Russian blogger @fighterbomber, which closely follows the Russian air force, the attack was the first use of Australian-provided delivery drones made of cardboard.
Insider could not independently confirm the claim, but on Tuesday Ukraine's ambassador to Australia Vasyl Mryoshnychenko vouched for it, saying in a post on X: "Cardboard drones from Australia used in attack on Russian airfield."

The claim is not as wild as it sounds. In March, Australian defense manufacturer SYPAQ announced it had secured a $700,000 contract with the Australian government to produce its Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System drones for Ukraine.

The Corvo drones are described by SYPAQ as "the cardboard plane," but per an earlier company press release they're made from waxed foamboard. They come flat-packed and can fly up to 75 miles — putting Kursk just within reach of the borders of Ukraine.

They are designed for reconnaissance or delivery rather than for carrying explosives.

It's unclear how exactly they would have been used as part of the latest attack. Per @fighterbomber's claim, the attack combined explosive drones with empty ones, suggesting the Corvo's lightweight board construction would help the overall group evade radar.

Former Australian general Mick Ryan told The Age that it would be simple to adapt the Corvo to carry explosives. SYPAQ declined to comment to the paper on how the drones were used.
In a post about the drone attack, the Russian MoD's description of the drones over Kursk said they were aircraft-style, which corresponds with the Corvo design.

The strike would be a cost-effective way to take out exorbitant Russian planes: A Su-30 is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars to manufacture.

The Russian MoD made no mention of damage at the airfield, simply saying it had shot down two drones over Kursk and in Bryansk, around 150 miles away. Meanwhile, Kursk's governor, Roman Starovoyt said that a drone had damaged an apartment block.
Explosions were caught on camera near Kursk railway station that night, Ukrainian outlet RBC reported.

The ambassador told the Sydney Morning Herald that the airfield is a "legitimate target" because Russia uses it as a base to launch attacks on Ukraine.

archive link: https://archive.is/8TkUt

Experts say it’s less risky to catch Covid-19 than it used to be, but there are still good reasons not to treat it casually.

Covid-19 was never just another cold. We knew it was going to stick around and keep changing to try to get the upper hand on our immune systems.

But we’ve changed, too. Our B cells and T cells, keepers of our immune memories, aren’t as blind to this virus as they were when we first encountered the novel coronavirus in 2020. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has screened blood samples and estimates that 97% of people in the US have some immunity to Covid-19 through vaccination, infection or both.

Then there’s science: We have updated vaccines and good antivirals to lean on when cases start to rise. Masks still work. Rapid tests are in stores. We now know to filter the air and to ventilate our spaces.

Those strategies, plus our hard-won immunity, had helped bring our national numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths down to levels that felt almost forgettable.

Almost.

Now that Covid-19 infections have started to rise again, it feels like people all over the country are testing positive, and it’s hard to know how to react. The government has been dialing back its response since the end of the public health emergency in May. Good Covid-19 data is hard to come by and harder to interpret.

So if people are less likely to be hospitalized or die from a Covid-19 infection now, has the danger passed? Is there still reason to worry if you do catch the infection for a second, third or fourth time?

Experts say it’s less risky to catch Covid-19 than it used to be, but there are still good reasons not to treat it casually.

“At this point, the risk is lower because of our prior immunity, whether for severe outcomes or for long Covid,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and dean of the Yale School of Public Health.

“Covid is still more dangerous than the flu, but its level of danger is becoming less,” she said, noting that we’re still very early in our human experience with the coronavirus, even four years in, and there are still things we don’t know.

“But for it to behave like other respiratory viruses in terms of seasonality and surges is entirely expected,” she added.

It would be “really weird” for Covid to disappear or for it not to cause illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths. “It is still a virus,” Ranney said.

But a somewhat predictable waxing and waning of infections doesn’t make Covid-19 something to turn our backs on.

Our immune systems are better at spotting danger

After more than three grueling years, nearly all Americans have some immunity against Covid-19.

That means our immune systems – as long as they’re healthy and working as they should – will remember most forms of the coronavirus when it next comes our way.

That process takes some time to get going, however. That lag may give the virus enough of a window to get a foothold in our nasal passages or lungs, and we get sick. We may feel crummy for a few days, but then our B cells and T cells get their antibody production up and running. Eventually, they shut the virus down, and we get better.

That’s what should happen. But for many, their immune system just doesn’t kick in as quickly or as vigorously as it should.

Immune function drops off naturally with age. About 1 in 4 Americans is over the age of 60, according to census data. Then there are certain medications and health conditions that suppress immune function. About 3% of the U.S. population – 7 million people – is severely immunocompromised, according to the National Institutes of Health. This is a group taking medications to protect organ transplants or who are getting powerful drugs for cancer treatment, for example.

Then there’s individual variability. Through genetic bad luck, some people may just be at higher risk of serious reactions to Covid-19 infections, and they probably wouldn’t know it.

Taken together, that’s a sizeable pool of people who benefit greatly from having antibodies at the ready to take on the coronavirus as fast as possible. Vaccines get those antibodies in place and ready to work as soon as they’re needed.

Sometimes, people are so immunocompromised that vaccines can’t help them much, either. They benefit from preventive shots containing Covid-fighting antibodies that are built to stick around the body for a few months. Until this year, there was such a preventive product available, Evusheld. But the virus has evolved so much that Evusheld lost its potency, and in January, the FDA revoked its authorization.

Since then, people who have very low immune function haven’t had anything to protect them from infection or severe disease. But that could change. The government announced this week that it’s funding the development of a new preventive antibody through the drug company Regeneron. Trials of that drug are expected to start this fall, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.

While nearly all of us have immune systems that can recognize key parts of the virus now, even that memory to the infection fades over time. The longer it has been since you’ve been infected or vaccinated, the more forgetful your immune system becomes.

Those B cells and T cells, “they’re going to be a little slower to respond. They’re not they’re not as primed and ready to go,” Ranney said.

Your strongest immunity will be in the two weeks to two months after you get your vaccines. That means it’s smart to try to get your shots shortly before Covid is expected to be on the upswing. Just like for flu, experts expect the worst of Covid to hit in the fall and winter.

CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said that even though cases are going up now, most people will be better off waiting a few weeks to get the newly updated Covid-19 vaccines rather than trying to get one of the older bivalent vaccines right now. But this is dependent on personal risk, so if you’re concerned, talk to your doctor or nurse practitioner about your options.

Risks from new variants

Variants are another reason people need to keep getting Covid vaccines. The coronavirus evolves constantly. Most of the time, its improvements are incremental. In essence, it slips on a hat or fake mustache, but that’s not enough to completely disguise it from our immune system or our vaccines when it tries to break in.

Occasionally, it gets a makeover. It has cut and dyed its hair, had plastic surgery and lost a ton of weight, so to speak. These big changes make it unrecognizable to our immune system and sometimes to vaccines and drugs we use to fend it off.

That happened during the first wave of Omicron. A virus emerged in South Africa and Botswana that was wholly different from the viruses in circulation but still caused Covid-19. It quickly spread worldwide, infecting vaccinated and previously infected people alike. Omicron caused a jaw-dropping 1 million infections a day in the United States in the winter of 2021.

Another virus like that has emerged on the world stage. It’s called BA.2.86, and it has more than 30 amino acid changes to its spike protein, which makes it as genetically distant from its next closest ancestor – BA.2 – as the original Omicron variant was from the ancestral strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that emerged in 2019 in China.

Compared with the very first sequences of the virus that causes Covid-19, it has 58 changes to amino acids in its spike protein, according to Dr. Jesse Bloom, who studies the molecular structure of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

It’s not clear exactly where BA.2.86 came from. Scientists believe that the pattern of mutations it carries are characteristic of a virus that’s been changing inside the body of a chronically infected person. Typically, these patients have diminished immune function so that they can’t completely clear the virus from their bodies, but they have enough immunity that it puts pressure on the virus to keep changing to survive. Or it may have previously circulated in a part of the world with limited variant surveillance.

Scientists have spotted 13 human infections with this emerging variant have been confirmed from six countries: Israel, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States, Portugal and South Africa. The status of the patients is not known in every case. Of the cases for which information on the patients is available, one has been hospitalized, and none have died.

he people do not appear to have had contact with each other, and only one has traveled, indicating that the variant is present around the world and spreading in the community – though it is not known to what extent.

It has also been picked up at very low levels in wastewater in the US, Switzerland, Denmark and Thailand.

It is also not clear whether this virus will outcompete other circulating variants and grow to cause widespread infections. Variant hunters around the world seem to have spotted it early.

Researchers are studying whether it will be able to evade immunity from past infection and vaccination. More information should be available within a few weeks.

Unfortunately, the fact that the new coronavirus can morph this way means we’ll probably need to keep updating our vaccines and our immunity to keep pace.

The US government has launched Project NextGen, which aims to create longer-lasting and more variant-proof vaccines. The first clinical trials of those new vaccines are expected to start this winter, HHS says.
...

archive link: https://archive.is/OYOB6

Everyone is talking about an anonymous memo containing damning—and potentially fabricated—accusations against the hedge fund.

Twitter threads. Texts. Emails. Phone calls. All asking: Have you seen the Tiger Global memo?

Last week, finance circles were abuzz over an anonymously-written and damning memo that’s being sent around. The document, which extensively cites anonymous sources, details some pretty aggressive, and unsubstantiated, accusations against mega hedge fund and startup investor Tiger Global regarding its performance and personnel. While we reviewed the memo ourselves, we’ve decided not to print any of the specific accusations and details, as we have been unable to verify them by press time. Tiger sent a letter to investors on Friday, Forbes first reported, acknowledging the memo, but saying it is “packed with lies,” and that the firm was being “targeted with a series of information attacks.” The firm blamed the memo on a disgruntled former employee, according to the letter seen by Forbes.

The memo does include mention of some issues that have already been publicly reported, including a controversy around a reported large settlement with a female employee, and Tiger’s reported struggles with raising its new fund. The memo is also being circulated far and wide among investors and founders, leading to much speculation over who wrote it—and why. Tiger declined to comment to us beyond the contents of the letter to investors.

“It’s in everyone’s inbox right now,” one venture investor said, adding that founders have been texting them about it. Another fund manager told us: “I think I was sent this by six or more people in the last 48 hours,” they said Friday.

Interestingly, the memo is being billed as a draft of a big exposé from a New York media brand (The New Yorker). But we confirmed that isn’t the case. A spokesperson for The New Yorker told us: “This is not a draft New Yorker article, and we do not know its provenance.” The fund manager told us a similar memo was sent to them six to eight months ago, though The New Yorker was not mentioned in that one.

And from our perspective, as journalists, we highly doubt this was written by anyone in our field. There are some tells, like the fact that the writer doesn’t explain an “asset-liability duration mismatch,” the kind of jargon journalists almost always spell out to a general audience. Not to mention, it’s quite unheard of for drafts of stories to be sent around except to one’s editors. While it’s not yet confirmed who wrote or passed the memo around, one thing is clear: someone has it out for Tiger.

The memo comes at a time when Tiger is reeling from the cratering market. The hedge fund plowed massive amounts of cash into startups in 2021 at a rapid clip, investing at high valuations without taking board seats at companies. Now, the private market is going through a correction, and Tiger has struggled to raise more funding to invest in private companies. Meanwhile, the fund has been trying to offload swaths of its stakes in startups; and The Information reported last week that Tiger is nearing a deal to sell part of its stake in buzzy artificial intelligence startup Cohere at a $3 billion valuation—a boost from Cohere’s most recent raise at a roughly $2 billion valuation in June. (Tiger first invested in 2021 in a $125 million Series B round, although the valuation wasn’t disclosed, per PitchBook.) Per reports, Tiger’s performance has recovered somewhat this year from severe lows in 2022, though its public funds are still underperforming the rebound in public tech stocks so far in 2023. Tiger, which has backed prominent startups like Instacart, Databricks, and OpenAI, is subject to the same kind of valuation headwinds the rest of the industry is facing. Its most recent private fund had reported a 20% paper loss as of December 2022, The Information reported in April.

Whatever way you look at it, the mysterious memo has sparked fear in other fund managers.

“This is a new form of meme warfare that every fund should be petrified of,” the fund manager says. “You can essentially create longform, unsubstantiated claims that can go viral to every major decision maker and to refute them is to only give them more credibility. That’s scary.”

archive link: https://archive.is/BTSTS

Taiwanese microchip manufacturer TSMC blames struggle to build Phoenix plant on skilled labor shortage but workers cite disorganization and safety concerns

Posed in front of an American flag and a large banner reading “A Future Made in America Phoenix, AZ,” Joe Biden told a crowd of assembled workers, supporters and media last December: “American manufacturing is back, folks.”

Eight months on, the Phoenix microchip plant – the centerpiece of Biden’s $52.7bn US hi-tech manufacturing agenda – is struggling to get online.

The plant’s owner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the largest chip maker in the world, has pushed back plans to start manufacturing to 2025, blaming a lack of skilled labor. It is trying to fast-track visas for 500 Taiwanese workers. Unions, meanwhile, are accusing TSMC of inventing the skills shortage as an excuse to hire cheaper, foreign labor. Others point to safety issues at the plant.

The success of the plant – in a crucial swing state – is likely to get even more scrutiny as Biden prepares for the 2024 election cycle and US tensions with China over technology, and Taiwan, escalate.

Biden signed the Chips and Science Act, which includes $52.7bn in loans, grants and other incentives, and billions more in tax credits for manufacturers to produce the chips in the US, in August 2022.

The Arizona project is the flagship in the president’s efforts to tout the law’s effects and TSMC’s promised $40bn investment in US chip production plant is one of the largest foreign investments in US history and the largest ever in Arizona.

The stakes could not be higher. Semiconductor chips are the essential components of computers, smartphones and other electronic devices, and the coronavirus pandemic exposed how vulnerable the US had become to imported chips. About 12% of semiconductor chips are made in the US, down from 37% in 1990. Boosting US production will add thousands of jobs as well as securing US supplies at a time of worsening relations with China, whose rapidly growing industry accounts for about 9% of global semiconductor sales.

The Phoenix semiconductor manufacturing facility, or “fab”, is a huge undertaking, encompassing a 1,000-acre area north of Phoenix, set to include two fab facilities. Construction is expected to generate 21,000 construction jobs, with the workforce at the facilities estimated at about 4,500, and thousands of additional jobs at suppliers in the area.

But the construction of the plant has been hampered by accidents and misunderstandings, according to insiders who spoke to the Guardian.

A former supervisor at the site explained all contractors at the site operate under the management of two companies affiliated with TSMC, United Integrated Services (UIS) and Marketech International Corp, and blamed delays on disorganization from management and a lack of knowledge by bosses from Taiwan on adhering to safety codes and regulations in the US.

If you disagreed, they threatened “to take work from you and give it to somebody else”, they said. They requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from their general contractor employer. “Then the non-union contractors couldn’t get enough guys out there who were skilled enough.”

They said when they started working at the site, all workers went through a safety training program, but out in the field, they never saw the people who ran that program or safety protocols enforced.

“There were multiple general contractors all in the same little areas, all of them saying different things. Nobody ever coordinated anything; everybody was always in each other’s way, people were storing material everywhere, and it was constantly holding up little projects,” they said.

They explained the main contractors would give them a priority task to complete, but that it would change daily, or they would completely change their mind, making it impossible to complete tasks and add to delays.

“When you have to put stuff up, tear it down, put it up, tear it down, literally five or six times, that’s going to cost five or six times the original quote, probably more because you have to get demolitions involved,” the worker said. “This was constantly the whole process. Everything was rushed. They weren’t giving us actual blueprints, just engineer drawings. It felt like a design-as-we-go type of deal. The information we were getting was really strange, never complete, and always changing. We would get updates constantly and these were big updates to the point where we would have to start pulling things down.”

The worker also criticized frequent evacuations of the job site that occurred mostly due to false alarms and other communication issues that delayed work. They described long traffic lines and wait times to travel in and out of the job site that worsened whenever it rained because of the mud and said the constant turnover of contractors for different job tasks made it even more hectic.

They also noted that portable toilets were too few and were never properly cleaned or stocked with toilet paper and soap, probably resulting in workers getting sick. The worker said instead of calling 911 for safety emergencies, workers were directed to call an internal safety hotline, but that those medical services always took a long time to respond.

“I’ve never been on a job site like this. A job site this big with this many people, you have to be super safe, everything kind of has to slow down because you’re always in somebody’s way, so you have to have a perfect plan if you want to pull this off,” they concluded. “I think they need to get those Taiwan contractors out of there because they are not used to building in America at all. They’re hiring us as professionals to give them a quality installation and advice and direction on how to install things, but they would not listen to us at all.”

Workers and local unions have disputed TSMC’s characterization of the workforce and reasons for the delays. The Arizona Pipe Trades 469 is currently petitioning against TSMC’s application for 500 visas for workers from Taiwan to build the facilities.

A TSMC spokesperson characterized these new visa applications as part of a new phase of construction in the project to install process equipment.

“To ensure this critical phase of tool installation goes smoothly and successfully, it is a very common practice in the semiconductor industry to have a very limited number of experienced specialists from different overseas locations onsite to assist with important steps in the process. These experienced individuals have deep familiarity with our supplier equipment and will partner with our strong local workforce during this phase,” said the spokesperson in an email.

In an op-ed, Aaron Butler, president of the Arizona Building and Construction Trades Council, criticized TSMC’s announcement as an attempt to endanger American jobs and disputed claims from TSMC that the US workforce lacks the experience and skills required to complete construction.

“Blaming American workers for problems with this project is as offensive to American workers as it is inaccurate,” Butler wrote. “TSMC is blaming its construction delays on American workers and using that as an excuse to bring in foreign workers who they can pay less.”
....

archive link: https://archive.is/6QajQ

“Who would have declared such a war on us in Moscow?”

After six consecutive days of drone attacks on the Moscow region this week, one would think the shock of sudden late-night explosions might compel some Russians to consider what Ukrainian civilians have endured during 550 days of relentless Russian attacks.

Instead, some residents near the Russian capital have taken to social media to vent about the inconvenience of being woken up in the middle of the night, question why the “international community” isn’t coming to their rescue, and blame Ukrainian “terrorists” for targeting civilian areas. (Never mind that Moscow has repeatedly attacked residential areas in Ukraine with Iranian-made Shahed drones.)

No injuries have been reported in the recent string of attacks, and Russian officials claim to have shot down most of the drones that they say caused only “minor damage” to a building in Moscow City and several broken windows elsewhere. Kyiv has not confirmed or denied involvement in the drone strikes.

Russian media widely covered the attacks, airing interviews with residents who showed off their broken windows.

“It was scary to go up to the window,” said one man recounting his shock to wake up and find his window shattered. “This is the first time anything like this has happened to me.”

Separately, he told Deutsche Welle, “At first, there was panic. I thought the building had been hit by a shell.”

“It’s very scary. What if it hits the house next time?” another resident told DW, noting that she has a young child in the home. “Who would have declared such a war on us in Moscow?” she asked, unironically.
...

archive link: https://archive.is/xFkDe

Protesters say classification as ‘domestic terrorists’ for opposing planned Georgia police facility has upended their lives

Before boarding a flight from San Francisco to New York last month, Luke “Lucky” Harper was pulled aside and subjected to a search of his body and his belongings in front of other passengers waiting to board.

The experience would have been even more upsetting if it wasn’t the third time in several weeks. Harper was also searched in airports in Nashville, Tennessee, and Salt Lake City, Utah. His name was called out on a loudspeaker; officials swabbed his hands, seeking traces of explosives.

The 27-year-old aspiring writer had recently been released from jail in Dekalb county, Georgia, after being arrested on state domestic terrorism charges at a music festival on 5 March. He is one of 42 people facing the same charges in Georgia in connection with ongoing protests against a planned police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”. Another dozen or so people have been arrested and charged with felony stalking of a police officer – after handing out flyers – and money laundering, among other charges. Some were jailed in solitary confinement for days without explanation.

Although nearly a year has passed since the earliest arrests, no one has been indicted. The terrorism charges have been denounced as part of a “broader attempt to smear protesters as national security threats” in a letter by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other groups.

As with Harper, the lives of the arrestees have been upended. Some have lost jobs or been barred from attending school. Most are living with the psychological impacts of the criminal justice system being wielded against them with little to no publicly released evidence of having committed any crimes. At least 13 of them have posted fundraisers online to help with everything from housing to mental health.

Harper was arrested after arriving at the public park near the Cop City site the day before a 5 March music festival, part of a week of activities against the training center.

“I was there because I was curious,” Harper said.

He had never been to the forest before. During the festival, at least 100 people walked into the woods, crossed a creek and knocked over a fence where construction of the training center had begun. Some of them threw rocks and burned equipment. Harper was arrested hours later and accused of participating, in part due to his clothes being muddy and to a photo allegedly showing him at the scene.
...

archive link: https://archive.is/wip/Y7oKo

Land privatization and water depletion set the stage for the Lahaina fire 150 years ago. Now, land companies may benefit even more

In the late 18th century, when the Hawaiian Kingdom became a sovereign state, Lahaina carried such an abundance of water that early explorers reportedly anointed it “Venice of the Pacific”. A glut of natural wetlands nourished breadfruit trees, extensive taro terraces and fishponds that sustained wildlife and generations of Native Hawaiian families.

But more than a century and a half of plantation agriculture, driven by American and European colonists, have depleted Lahaina’s streams and turned biodiverse food forests into tinderboxes. Today, Hawaii spends $3bn a year importing up to 90% of its food. This altered ecology, experts say, gave rise to the 8 August blaze that decimated the historic west Maui town and killed more than 111 people.

“The rise of plantation capital spawned the drying of the west side of Maui,” said Kamana Beamer, a historian and a former member of the Hawaii commission on water resource management, which is charged with protecting and regulating water resources. “You can see the link between extractive, unfettered capitalism at the expense of our natural resources and the ecosystem.”

Drawn to Hawaii’s temperate climate and prodigious rainfall, sugar and pineapple white magnates began arriving on the islands in the early 1800s. For much of the next two centuries, Maui-based plantation owners like Alexander & Baldwin and Maui Land & Pineapple Company reaped enormous fortunes, uprooting native trees and extracting billions of gallons of water from streams to grow their thirsty crops. (Annual sugar cane production averaged 1m tons until the mid-1980s; a pound of sugar requires 2,000lb of freshwater to produce.)

Invasive plants that were introduced as livestock forage, like guinea grass, now cover a quarter of Hawaii’s surface area. The extensive use of pesticides on Maui’s pineapple fields poisoned nearby water wells.

The dawn of large-scale agriculture dramatically changed land practices in Maui, where natural resources no longer served as a mode of food production or a habitat for birds but a means of generating fast cash, said Lucienne de Naie, an east Maui historian and chair of the Sierra Club Maui group.

n the late 18th century, when the Hawaiian Kingdom became a sovereign state, Lahaina carried such an abundance of water that early explorers reportedly anointed it “Venice of the Pacific”. A glut of natural wetlands nourished breadfruit trees, extensive taro terraces and fishponds that sustained wildlife and generations of Native Hawaiian families.

But more than a century and a half of plantation agriculture, driven by American and European colonists, have depleted Lahaina’s streams and turned biodiverse food forests into tinderboxes. Today, Hawaii spends $3bn a year importing up to 90% of its food. This altered ecology, experts say, gave rise to the 8 August blaze that decimated the historic west Maui town and killed more than 111 people.

“The rise of plantation capital spawned the drying of the west side of Maui,” said Kamana Beamer, a historian and a former member of the Hawaii commission on water resource management, which is charged with protecting and regulating water resources. “You can see the link between extractive, unfettered capitalism at the expense of our natural resources and the ecosystem.”
...

archive link: https://archive.is/of1Ln

The second-largest planet in our solar system will glow extra-bright with a golden light in the coming days.

One of the year’s must-see stargazing events is underway, giving us an incredible look at one of our solar system’s outer planets.

Once a year, Earth passes in between the sun and Saturn, which brings the famously ringed planet opposite the sun in our sky — an alignment astronomers call “opposition,” which in 2023 will occur overnight on August 26-27, according to the astronomy site EarthSky.

Opposition is the time during the year when Saturn is at its closest to Earth and shines its brightest, making this weekend, and the days following, an exceptional time to view this impressive planet. You don’t need special equipment to see Saturn’s glow in the night sky, but a telescope of any size can dramatically change the experience by revealing its spectacular rings.

To the unaided eye, Saturn will be visible in the night sky as a bright, faintly golden point of light. Its shine will be steady, not twinkling.

A telescope, however, will show Saturn’s rings — an awe-inspiring sight. A small backyard telescope is enough to see Saturn’s distinct ringed shape, though larger telescopes can provide even more gasp-inducing views, so check with local astronomy groups and planetariums for public stargazing events.

Look for Saturn to rise in the east around sunset; it will be visible all night. It will reach exact opposition at 4 a.m. ET on August 27, when it will be in the constellation of Aquarius, the water bearer. If the weather doesn’t cooperate for viewing this weekend, don’t worry; while it will diminish in brightness, Saturn will be visible in the evening sky for the remainder of the year.

archive link: https://archive.is/wip/k9wOa

The second-largest planet in our solar system will glow extra-bright with a golden light in the coming days.

One of the year’s must-see stargazing events is underway, giving us an incredible look at one of our solar system’s outer planets.

Once a year, Earth passes in between the sun and Saturn, which brings the famously ringed planet opposite the sun in our sky — an alignment astronomers call “opposition,” which in 2023 will occur overnight on August 26-27, according to the astronomy site EarthSky.

Opposition is the time during the year when Saturn is at its closest to Earth and shines its brightest, making this weekend, and the days following, an exceptional time to view this impressive planet. You don’t need special equipment to see Saturn’s glow in the night sky, but a telescope of any size can dramatically change the experience by revealing its spectacular rings.

To the unaided eye, Saturn will be visible in the night sky as a bright, faintly golden point of light. Its shine will be steady, not twinkling.

A telescope, however, will show Saturn’s rings — an awe-inspiring sight. A small backyard telescope is enough to see Saturn’s distinct ringed shape, though larger telescopes can provide even more gasp-inducing views, so check with local astronomy groups and planetariums for public stargazing events.

Look for Saturn to rise in the east around sunset; it will be visible all night. It will reach exact opposition at 4 a.m. ET on August 27, when it will be in the constellation of Aquarius, the water bearer. If the weather doesn’t cooperate for viewing this weekend, don’t worry; while it will diminish in brightness, Saturn will be visible in the evening sky for the remainder of the year.

archive link: https://archive.is/wip/k9wOa